#Commentary of Ekaterina Martyanova on new Ukrainian projects for Donbass territories temporary controlled by Kiev authorities

01.08.2017

The Minister for Temporary Occupied Territories and Internally Displaced Persons of Ukraine has received funding in the amount of $51 692 208 for the project entitled “Increasing public’s trust” with the support of the United States Agency for International Development’s Office of Transition Initiative.

Among the stated objectives of the project are: increase in the number of supporters of the reforms of the new Ukrainian authority on the basis of tolerance and democratic values of “Maidan”; increasing of level of citizen’s trust and their involvement in the reform process at the local level; reduction of vulnerability to external manipulation and information.

In other words, the curators of the Ukrainian authorities, at the expense of the USAID, are starting a campaign in response to the humanitarian programme for the reunification of the people of Donbass, which was initiated in the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics. However, Western political strategists work on known patterns that do not take into account the specifics of Donbass. If the authorities of the DPR offer free treatment in the medical institutions of the Republic, education in higher educational establishments on a budget basis, goods at social prices and other specific cases, the Ukrainian NPOs offer only agitation and propaganda for Western grant money. And the propaganda is never enough.

It is like a parable about a horse and sand. Sand cannot be an oat even if it has a similar colour.

The people of Donbass are not oriented towards the ‘ideological sand’ of the “Maidan” ideologues, but towards what the Kiev power does for them and how the marauders of volunteer battalions and the AFU act in the temporarily controlled territories by the Ukrainian authorities. And you can see their crimes with the naked eye.

Once again, this whole process proves that the American partners of Ukraine are not interested in the welfare of the Donbass people, but are concerned only with the level of confidence in their henchmen in the face of pseudo reformers and blocking of information coming from Republics.

But it is worth emphasizing that the western curators of Ukraine have indeed been horrified by the effectiveness of the humanitarian programme initiated by the Head of the Republic Alexander Zakharchenko and have invested considerable resources to counter it. But this money is likely to be shared among those who seek grants and will disappear like water on the sand.